


Easier to Ask for Forgiveness

by howboutinotdothis



Series: Jared Kleinman's Guide to Being a Horrible Soulmate [2]
Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: M/M, Soulmate AU, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, how does one write jared, i have no clue, idk man i just felt like writing the jumping out of the tree bit today, im not used to writing in past tense so this is just a grammatical mess, ooc af as usual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 21:58:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10908261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howboutinotdothis/pseuds/howboutinotdothis
Summary: Jared got this horribly cryptic thing that had him grabbing his cell phone and calling his soulmate, rules be damned.There, in sharp letters that overlapped in certain places so that the words were barely recognizable, was a simple sentence, no more than nine words long.I’m sorry we’ll never get to meet in person.





	1. Than for Permission

**Author's Note:**

> So. Happy mother's day, I guess.
> 
> There will be happy parts to this series, I'm just not in the mood to write them lmao
> 
> Comments/kudos/ crit are always welcome!
> 
> (warning for suicidal thoughts/suicide attempt. please do not read if those are difficult subjects for you. your mental health is more important than reading this.)

“It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission.”

Evan’s dad loved to say that. One of his favorite maxims.

“It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission, son,” he’d said as he loaded up the grocery cart with candy and cookies they couldn’t afford. Evan remembered the way those cookies tasted overly sweet on his tongue. He remembered the way his father stuffed the wrappers in the bottom of the trash bag along with the receipt, aiming to avoid the inevitable fight with Evan’s mother a few hours more.

“It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission,” Evan’s father had reminded him as he booked a flight to Las Vegas, keen on going to his company’s hub meeting regardless of Heidi’s opinion on it. Evan remembered the bright, neon colors of the website advertising the city; he remembered how gaudy he thought it looked. He remembered how the brightness of the computer screen burned his eyes in the darkness of his father’s office.

“It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission, Evan,” his father had insisted, grasping desperately for some explanation as to why he ruined their family. Evan remembered the pain in his mother’s voice as she told him that his father wasn’t going to be staying in the house with them anymore. Evan remembered the way his eyes burned, tears threatening to slip out, to reveal to his parents that he wasn’t a big boy, that he wasn’t ready to hear any of this. He remembered the way his father’s face had fallen when Evan asked him why. Why was this woman—this woman who he’d met at a bar on a business trip, this woman who just happened to write his drink order on her exposed arm, this woman who was something as meaningless as his _soulmate_ —more important than him, than his mother? Why couldn’t his father have _waited_?

Evan never did get a good answer to any of those questions.

It didn’t matter anymore, he supposed. If it had ever mattered at all. His father made his choice, and all of them just had to live with it.

Evan was finally making his own choice.

The national park was dead at the end of Evan’s last day as a junior park ranger. The sun was setting, a burnt orange smudge far away on the horizon, impaled by the figures of towering trees. The other kids in the program were long gone, swept away by a flurry of older siblings and parents, and the rangers running the camp had gone about their normal business, more than a little relieved to be done with the camp for this summer.

Evan was alone in the parking lot. His car—a monstrous thing his father picked up at a dealership for dirt cheap for his sixteenth birthday—sat in one of the poorly marked parking spaces in the gravel lot. It looked as though it would be more at home in a junkyard than in the parking lot, let alone on the road.

He could have gone home. He could have gotten in his car, shoved the key in the ignition, and peeled out of the parking lot, leaving behind this horrible plan he’d conjured up in his mind over the course of many restless nights and too bright mornings. He could have gotten in his car and finally called that number that had appeared on his arm so many months ago, begged for forgiveness for these awful thoughts and feelings, for this jumbled up mess inside that he couldn’t see clearly through. He could have listened to that voice he’d imagined for so long, he could have let them coax him back to his house, convince him that things would be alright someday.

But they wouldn’t. Things wouldn’t get better.

Evan walked past the welcome center. The lights were off, shrouding the colorful signs about fun activities to do in the park and the trail map on the wall in darkness. It was fine, though. Evan knew which trail would take him where he needed to go.

His feet felt like cement blocks as he trekked down the boardwalk. His chest was tight with fear—that same fear that prevented him from doing this earlier, that convinced him that the pain and the misery and the _exhaustion_ was better than nonexistence, that begged him to stop. His footsteps echoed through the forest, loud enough to be heard over the brilliant cacophony of the forest at sunset. His skin prickled with discomfort as that strange feeling of being watched settled in the empty pit of his stomach. He swiveled around, eyes catching the flap of an owl’s wing.

Evan was disappointed almost. He’d hoped—he’d stupidly hoped—that someone would see, would see that he was floundering, that he was barely staying afloat, that they would follow him on this momentous night, calling out to him at the last moment for him to stop. He desperately searched for some sign that the universe thought he was making the wrong decision, accepting and dismissing every imagined signal as it appeared, viewing the indifference of nature as support of his final endeavor.

The wooden planks of the boardwalk faded into the dirt of a frequently trod path. Signs reminding park goers not to litter or to ride their bikes on the trail dotted the forest, painted in hues of yellow and orange. Evan messed with the hem of his shirt, wearing at the thin fabric with his thumbs, and then started twisting the cap of the pen he brought along with him. Alana gave him that pen. For his fourteenth birthday, Evan thought. It was a ballpoint pen that he rarely used for fear of breaking something so sentimental.

That night he figured that breaking it wouldn’t have mattered. It wasn’t as though he’d be around to mourn its loss anyways.

He was scared. Terrified, actually.

Evan pressed on.

The trail disappeared, the dirt path hidden by the thick underbrush. Evan hung a left and wandered deeper into the forest. He didn’t have a specific goal, not really—more of a vague idea of what would work and what wouldn’t. Evan was still in the part of the national park populated by fairly young trees that had yet to stretch skywards, so he continued into the greenery as the light faded and he was left in the dark.

He thought it might be funny—or poetic, even—that the first time he really persevered, the first time he really dared to step out of his comfort zone, was to—to—

Even then, he shied away from the words that truly described what he was doing, what he was heading towards. Evan feared that if he thought those words, his resolve to see this plan through to the end would evaporate like a shallow puddle on the forest floor. So he tiptoed around it, thinking in vague terms of what was to come, ignoring the way his chest clenched painfully, the way his palms began to sweat, the way his eyes burned with unshed tears.

Evan found himself at the base of an oak tree. It was tall and probably looked magnificent during the day, but for now it was an intimidating, stately presence, bathing him in a level of darkness he had not yet experienced. The sun was gone and there were no lights this far out, so the only source of light was the pinpricks of light dotting the indigo of the night sky.

He scaled the tree, fumbling for each branch in the darkness, fear settling in his chest whenever his sweaty palm would slip off the bark and he’d nearly plummet to the ground. Evan went as high as he could, estimating that he was between thirty and forty feet off the ground. High enough, he thought.

It had to be high enough.

Evan pulled the pen from his pocket, cursing softly under his breath when he realized he wouldn’t be able to see well enough to write any kind of legible message. Not that he was planning on writing some long paragraph in which he’d wax poetic about how this person—this person he didn’t even _know_ , this person arbitrarily assigned to him by the powers that be, this person who probably didn’t give a shit about him—had made the last few weeks not so bad. How they alleviated the soul-crushing despair just enough to make Evan think that maybe one day he could be…well. He didn’t know. Better, maybe?

Evan didn’t even remember what better was like.

_It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission_ , his father’s voice whispered in his mind. Evan supposed that there wasn’t really much of a way to ask for permission anyhow—it’s not as though he could have expected his soulmate to give the okay on him killing himself. And that’s what it would have been. Permission to kill himself.

Evan was waiting for a moment of clarity. A second in which his addled mind would have cleared enough for him to snap out of this daze he found himself in, for his body to start screaming for him to get down to safety, for his instinct to survive to kick in and force him to climb back down and blindly stumble back through the forest.

The moment never came. He uncapped the pen and held his arm out, trying to use the starlight to illuminate his skin enough for him to write. Evan scribbled a sentence on his right arm. He doubted that his soulmate would be able to make sense of the shaky lines crammed together on their skin, but at least he tried.

At least Evan tried.


	2. Than to Stop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jared was expecting something annoyed on his arm that day.

Jared had no idea how long the words had been there.

He glanced over at his right arm when he was winding down from a sugar and caffeine-aided all-nighter, scrubbing his eyes as the sun peaked in his window, preparing to dive under the covers and sleep through the entire day. Even through his bleary, sleep-deprived gaze, Jared could make out the chicken scratch that was his soulmate’s writing. He turned on his desk lamp and picked up a pen, prepared to write something back about how communication would be much easier if his soulmate texted him instead of relying on the marks all the time. They had each other’s numbers and Jared admitted that he had been tempted to call his soulmate a few times, which was, apparently, not something he was supposed to do. People weren’t supposed to mess with fate, Jared needed to be patient, he’d meet his soulmate when the time came, blah, blah, blah.

Jared thought that was a dumb rule, but he wasn’t going to jeopardize his bond or whatever just because he’s shit at delayed gratification. Honestly, there was a distinct possibility it wasn’t even an actual rule; Jared wouldn’t put it past his soulmate to make something like that up so they don’t have to deal with him pestering them all the time. That’s one of the (few) things he knew about his soulmate—they did _not_ like being pestered.

Still, he’d never paid attention when they spoke in class about soulmate stuff because that was back in elementary school when he was convinced he wouldn’t have a soulmate. Not because of some poor self-image bullshit, but because his parents were bondless and their parents were bondless and _their_ parents were bondless—basically, Jared came from a long ass line of people without soulmates and he just kind of assumed the powers that be wouldn’t want to break that streak, you know? Then, boom, he was getting a mark from his soulmate, who he apparently got sent home because of the homage to male genitalia covering his—their—right arm.

Over the years, they’d communicated through marks—and more recently through texts—and Jared had grown to like his soulmate. They drew trees a lot—little lines with circles atop them was probably a more accurate description, but it was cute all the same. They’d drop a sarcastic comment on his upper thigh once in a while, complaining about some of the kids in school who messed with them, or a tiny heart on his inner elbow. When Jared covered his stomach in history facts to cheat on an exam, they covered his entire stomach in scribbles and angry faces, signaling their displeasure that he was cheating. He was annoyed at first—after all, he hadn’t studied and had been banking on using the information he spent hours copying on himself to pass—but he thought it was kind of sweet that his soulmate got all huffy over him trying to cheat. They cared about him actually learning the material, or something. It was nice.

Jared was expecting something annoyed on his arm that day. After all, he did draw a bunch of Pepe the frogs all over his left calf and his soulmate was doing some weird national park tree hugger thing, so they probably didn’t appreciate having to wear pants to cover the drawings in this heat. Jared tended to do shit like that a lot, which was against the soulmate code of conduct, but his soulmate never seemed to mind all that much. They’d gotten supremely pissy over that kind of thing when they were kids, but if anything they’d seemed to gain an appreciation for it in recent years.

Instead, Jared got this horribly cryptic thing that had him grabbing his cell phone and calling his soulmate, rules be damned.

There, in sharp letters that overlapped in certain places so that the words were barely recognizable, was a simple sentence, no more than nine words long.

_I’m sorry we’ll never get to meet in person._

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed(?)
> 
> feel free to hmu on tumblr at @jaredkleinmanisanerd


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